Fans of Yeah Yeah Yeahs are questioning the band's taste, and even their sanity, following the unveiling of their new album cover.

The record is called Mosquito and is due on 16 April, but the point of contention is the artwork. Designed by South Korean-born animator Beomsik Shimbe Shim, the image seems like a hideous Pixar outtake: a spiky-haired baby in the grip of a giant mosquito, with dripping green goo and a cartoony new typeface. At best, it's phantasmagoric. At worst, it feels like a computer-generated tribute to Karen O's favourite film, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie.

While fans are thrilled to be getting their first Yeah Yeah Yeahs album in four years, reactions to Mosquito's cover are almost universally hostile. "That's got to be one of the worst album covers of all time," wrote one fan. "I thought the album art was just someone joking around at first, just realised it's real," complained another. Twitter offered a plethora of wisecracks:

If the cover is deemed awful, at least the music sounds interesting: "We took a more playful, lo-fi approach to songwriting," Karen O said. "[It's] kind of raw, kind of chaotic, kind of dreamy … You might catch some roots reggae and minimalist psychedelia influences in there."

As with 2009's It's Blitz!, the LP was produced by Nick Launay and TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek. But the band also had some help from LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, who produced one song, and rapper Kool Keith, who also performs on one track. "There's probably more bass on this record than all the other records combined," Karen O told NME. "But there's also plenty of guitar."

Yeah Yeah Yeahs premiered new material on Friday night, at a concert in Pomona, California. "I'll suck your blood!" Karen O sang, according to Rolling Stone, in Mosquito's title song. A new album teaser shows her with a platinum blonde haircut, cooing over a messy low-end churn.

Many will thank Yeah Yeah Yeahs for posting a notice at the door of their gig asking fans not to watch the show through their screens. Cameraphone footage is infuriating and pointless, says Michael Hann